Product Description: Creatio ex nihilo is a foundational doctrine in the Abrahamic faiths. It states that God created the world freely out of nothing - from no pre-existent matter, space or time. This teaching is central to classical accounts of divine action, free will, grace, theodicy, religious language, intercessory prayer and questions of divine temporality and as such, the foundation of a scriptural God but also the transcendent Creator of all that is...read more

Product Description: Trying to articulate the ways in which one's life meshes with one's own time can be perilous, yet friends have encouraged me to do just that. Nevertheless, for one oriented to serving others as teacher and mentor in a context of faith, writing about oneself seems unnatural...read more

Product Description: It is hubris to claim answers to unanswerable questions. Such questions, however--as part of their burden and worth--must still be asked, investigated, and contemplated. How there can be a loving, all-powerful God and a world stymied by suffering and evil is one of the unanswerable questions we must all struggle to answer, even as our responses are closer to gasps, silences, and further questions...read more

Product Description: True religious faith cannot be confirmed by any external proofs. Rather, it is founded on a basic act of trust—and the common root of that trust, for Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, is a belief in the divine creation of the universe...read more

Product Description: In this book, David Burrell, one of the foremost philosophical theologians in the English-speaking world, presents the best of his work on creation and human freedom. A collection of writings by one of the foremost philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world...read more

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With creation of the universe as its focus and a deeper understanding of human freedom as its goal, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions is a work of philosophical theology that brings together Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives on the complex questions surrounding divine and human freedom. Burrell shows how the three traditions (each avowing the free creation of the universe by God) have developed a view of free human actors in relation to their initial affirmations that the universe is freely created by God. The concept of a free creation of the universe forms a motif for all three traditions, and their respective encounters with divine relation—in the Torah, Jesus Christ, and the Qur’an—offer distinctive ways of articulating and assimilating the original faith in a free creator. Burrell emphasizes the common ground among the traditions, but does not limit his discourse to a search for a common denominator among them. Instead, he traces the interactions among the traditions, employing an explicitly interfaith perspective that offers new ways to probe the vexing question of the relations between a free creator and free creatures. The results of this comparative method of reflection produce fresh insights into perennial human questions about creation and freedom—questions that have constituted a major body of theological reflection over the centuries.   Aimed at graduates and advanced undergraduates as well as laypersons interested in interfaith dialogue and reflection, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions illustrates the value of tradition-directed inquiry and clearly demonstrates the fruitfulness of comparative inquiries in philosophical theology.

Product Description: “This study of Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas on the structure and significance of language about God reminds us that such ecumenical dialogue was immensely productive in the Middle Ages, and the author’s perspective suggests how richly rewarding the renewal of such conversations might be for current philosophy among Jews, Christians, and Muslims...read more

In Truthfulness and Tragedy Stanley Hauerwas provides an account of moral existence and ethical rationality that shows how Christian convictions operate, or should operate, to form and direct lives. In attempting to conceptualize the basis of Christian ethics in a manner that will render Christian convictions morally intelligible, the author casts fresh light on traditional theoretical issues and articulates the distinctive Christian response to contemporary concerns such as suicide, medical ethics, and child care. /// The first section of the book deals with methodological issues: the meaning and nature of practical reason, obligation claims, natural law, and self deception, and the affinity of story and ethics/ It focuses on the relation of truthfulness and tragedy and the need for a story--a set of religious convictions or "grammar of theology"--that does justice to the tragic character of human existence. /// The second section addresses substantive issues: suicide, euthanasia, and the value of survival; the moral limits of population growth; the definition of "person" for medical reasons; and social involvement and Christian ethics. The overall theme is the need for a community in which truthfulness is a way of life. /// In the final section, devoted to the problem of how to care for retarded children, the implications of the author's ethical position are given concrete expression. He discusses the assumptions underlying the willingness to have children, criteria for humanness, medical ethics, and how truthful communities deal with suffering. /// In Truthfulness and Tragedy Stanley Hauerwas extends and clarifies the ethical position set forth in his earlier books Character and the Christian Life and Vision and Virtue. He is associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. He was a senior fellow in Christian medical ethics at the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Reproduction and Bioethics, and taught medical ethics at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston.